Ninety minutes into a 72-hour humanitarian truce facilitated by Egypt and reluctantly agreed to by Hamas, the calm was shattered and the fighting resumed. Palestinian militants opened fire on Israeli forces in south Gaza, prompting an artillery response from the Israel Defense Forces; rockets were fired at southern Israel and fierce battles ensued in the Strip. The fighting continued to escalate over the course of the morning and afternoon, with at least 90 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers killed, a third said kidnapped by Hamas; the temporary truce, the longest scheduled lull to date in this operation, was halted in its infancy and forgotten - back to the battlefield and back to the drawing board.
By agreeing to the lengthy truce, Hamas in effect surrendered – to Israel's military pressure, to the superiority of the Palestinian Authority pushing it into negotiations, and to the Egyptian mediators drafting the terms of the proposal. It is not known whether the breach of truce on Friday morning was carried out by Hamas local militants at their own discretion or upon orders of the top echelon. The latter is unlikely, but regardless of which militants attacked and on what level, it is Hamas' political leadership that ultimately answers to and accepts responsibility for every military action, as the rulers of the Gaza Strip.
Egypt told the Palestinians this week, following the snub of its exclusion from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's intervention, that they would not be invited back to Cairo for further negotiations until a temporary cease-fire had been set in place. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal on Thursday in a furious bid to convince him to agree to Egypt's terms and to a temporary lull, as the only way to set into motion negotiations for an actual end to the war. Hamas is a serious organization with a calculated political echelon. Meshal's word to abide by the truce was solid, indicating the Hamas political echelon's readiness to take the next step and move toward a permanent agreement.
The 72-hour truce was intended to give the sides the necessary time to hash out the details of Egypt's revised draft – one that included numerous changes acquiescing to Hamas' demands, particularly freedom of movement through Gaza's southern border crossing. With calm on the battle front, an amenable agreement could be determined and the real negotiations – on the future security arrangements in Gaza and on its borders – could begin. Following the breach of truce, Egypt informed Israel and the Palestinians that its delegations were no longer expected in Cairo on Friday, its conditions firm and unchanged: No negotiations until a temporary cease-fire is in place.
The Hamas leadership is divided into three hierarchical but highly coordinated governing bodies: the Majlis al-Shura, a religious council nominally in charge of the movement's strategic decisions and supervision of its activities; followed by the political bureau, run by Khaled Meshal from Qatar and Ismail Haniyeh, his chief deputy in Gaza; and the subordinate Iz A-din Qassam Brigades, the movement's military wing.
Hierarchy aside, the three bodies' decisions are made in tandem with one another. The military wing is not a renegade branch free to act of its accord. Every decision on the military front must be made with the knowledge and blessing of the political wing and the ruling council. There are cracks in communication, however, and not all orders are carried out; a likely explanation of the initial breach of truce on Friday morning: This is particularly true among the rank-and-file of Hamas' military command, where there is a growing sense of distance and abandonment from the political leadership. If it was Hamas that breached the truce on Friday – and not members of a separate Palestinian faction – it was a decision made within the mid-level military command, either by militants in the trenches unaware that a cease-fire had been declared or by those acting in defiance of political order. Regardless of why and how the breach of truce emerged, however, Hamas has in its wake withdrawn from its agreement and returned to battle mode.
Hamas opened this war three weeks ago because it had nothing to lose: it knew that firing rockets on Israel would draw fierce aerial attacks and likely lead to a ground invasion, along with a serious death toll among its civilian population; it knew that its long-range rocket supply would be wiped out by rapid fire and Israeli strikes, and it knew that even if it won back its former allies Hezbollah and Iran, there was no way they could help replenish its arsenal or that arms would flow again into its tightly secured borders.
Hamas also knew that it had surprise weaponry and strategies capable of inflicting more harm than either Israel or the world could have anticipated. Through its labyrinth of tunnels it managed to store hundreds of mid-range and dozens of long-range rockets (far beyond Israeli intelligence estimates), and beyond that, its greatest weapon of all: the ability to infiltrate Israel and launch its own ground incursion on enemy territory.
Hamas militants have managed to enter Israel through these tunnels at least five times in three weeks, a number of ambushes into Israeli territory unseen since the war in 1948. A 3 km security zone has been demarcated along the border inside Gaza, but no such buffer is in place inside Israel – civilians and soldiers sit meters from the border, on top of the tunnel openings. Israeli forces have located and destroyed dozens of the tunnels inside Gaza, but many remain hidden, including the openings into Israeli territory. The infiltrations can and will continue until either a cease-fire is secured or Israel is forced to evacuate its border towns and create a security strip of significant radius – a complicated and strategically difficult endeavor.
In battle terms, Israel has already won this war: 63 soldiers killed and three civilians, compared to more than 1,450 Palestinian fatalities, among them 400-500 combatant according to IDF estimates, and unimaginable destruction of Gaza's cities and villages. Hamas' leaders have already bent to political pressure, prepared to negotiate, but are of the same mind as their militants and those of the other Palestinian factions – no surrender and no end except on their own terms. Hamas can't lose this war, because they have nothing to lose. Its militants are prepared to fight until Israel, military power or not, cries uncle – or until the powers negotiating a permanent agreement relent, and include its terms in their entirety, an unlikely scenario at this point. Gaza may be demilitarized in the end, as Israel and Egypt hope, but it may well be through Hamas' own self-destruction, in months and countless deaths ahead. Without a quick and immediate cease-fire, this war will continue indefinitely.
Friday, August 1, 2014
Sunday, July 27, 2014
The UNHRC farce must not undermine an Israel-Gaza truce
Of all the United Nations agencies, the most obscure and self-defeating is the Human Rights Council. There are many organizations and bodies under UN auspices, some of them important for world peace – such as the Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – and those whose mandate is to clean the world of hunger and human injustices – the World Health Organization, the International Children's Fund, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the Refugee Agency and the Relief and Works Agency, tailor-made to deal with Palestinian refugees.
Each of these contributes to the betterment of humanity. The only UN body with the word human in its name, the UNHRC, is the most detached from humanity.
The UNHRC in Geneva returned last week to its favorite topic, one which it has focused on intensively from its very first session in 2006: Israeli crimes against humanity. To call it anti-Israel is an understatement, and one need not be pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian to deduce such from its track record.
In the 21 sessions since its inception in 2006 as the successor to the heavily criticized Commission on Human Rights, the UNHRC has released seven resolutions calling for investigation of Israeli human rights violations – one-third of its efforts. Four resolutions have been opened in that time against Syria (170,000 dead), two on Darfur (300,000 killed), and one on Libya (25,000 fatalities at the height of its 2011 civil war) – each of these countries guilty of extreme crimes against humanity. None of these resolutions or commissions of inquiry have yielded results other than deploring certain actions and a declaration of intent to investigate. None too, will its latest resolution on Israel.
The UNHRC's resolution on July 23 called for an urgent commission of inquiry into Israel's war crimes in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. It expressed "grave concern" over the lack of implementation from its previous commission charged with investigating human rights violations, led by Richard Goldstone, following the 2009 Gaza war, "convinced that lack of accountability for violations of international law reinforces a culture of impunity, leading to a recurrence of violations and seriously endangering the maintenance of international peace."
In the five pages of its latest resolution, Israel was noted 18 times – once calling for an end of attacks against civilians, including Israeli, and the rest deploring Israeli military aggressions, the incitement of extremist and illegal Israeli settlers, Israeli occupation, Israeli arrests of Palestinians, and Israeli failures to protect Palestinian civilians in accordance with international law. All important, all ignorant of the other side's own activities.
Hamas was not mentioned even once, not even in the brief clause demanding attention to the attacks against Israeli civilians. There was no clause recommending investigation into the Gazan government's use of civilian buildings as cover for its illegal tunnels housing weapons depots and launchers, nor into the widespread reports of its urging residents to ignore Israeli military warnings to evacuate – the word 'human shield' has never once been used in eight years of resolutions.
Twenty-nine of 46 member states voted in favor of the UNHRC's latest resolution, including India, in what has been seen as a major policy shift, as part of its alliance with the BRIC countries. Only the United States voted against the resolution; 17 countries abstained – all European. Their abstention, as the major voting bloc in the council, was tantamount to approval; in the UNHRC there is an automatic majority against Israel.
The resolution, as in most of the UN bodies – including the General Assembly and the Security Council - is not binding. It is a recommendation alone, one that reflects the "resolve" of a particular body, enforcing the views of its member states. There is little chance of legal intervention and unless the International Criminal Court or member states of the UNHRC choose to adopt the body's decision as legally binding nationally, the resolution will have no official impact on Israeli actions, nor can it threaten its legal status in international law.
What this resolution does, in effect, is isolate Israel as a violator of human rights, regardless of circumstance. In expressing its concern over the "lack of findings" in Goldstone's 2009 report, it neglects to mention that Goldstone himself retracted his findings of Israeli guilt of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity [an investigation which Israel refused to cooperate with]: "While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the UN committee's report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy," Goldstone said in his retraction.
Goldstone, who also served as chief prosecutor in the international tribunals of Yugoslavia and Rwanda following those genocides, criticized the UNHRC at the time of his retraction as a body that "repeatedly rush[es] to pass condemnatory resolutions in the face of alleged violations of human rights law by Israel but ... have failed to take similar action in the face of even more serious violations by other States. Until the Gaza Report they failed to condemn the firing of rockets and mortars at Israeli civilian centers."
The pattern is clear. The United Nations Human Rights Council has no bearing on international law, only on opinion. International efforts to determine crimes against humanity must not be left to an obscure council to determine – particularly not one in which nearly half of its members abstain in vote. There are tribunals for these prosecutions, obliged by international law to take into context the full picture – in this case, not just Israeli violations, but those of Hamas too. Any tribunal that fails to mention the crimes of Gaza's rulers has failed in its task of adhering to international law, regardless of its findings on Israeli actions.
The United Nations Human Rights Council should focus its efforts on the massacres still happening in Syria and in Iraq's Mosul region – where militias unbound by international law are at relentless and unsupervised war.
The conflict between Israel and Hamas – the latter which wishes to be seen as a viable regime with nearly three million people under its authority, with little military and political support – must first be concluded in a cease-fire between the two governments and then in a political agreement involving either the Palestinian Authority or an international supervising force, to ensure a long-standing cease-fire. Declarations of crimes against humanity on the part of Israel are premature, preconceived, and ignorant of the facts on the ground.
Each of these contributes to the betterment of humanity. The only UN body with the word human in its name, the UNHRC, is the most detached from humanity.
The UNHRC in Geneva returned last week to its favorite topic, one which it has focused on intensively from its very first session in 2006: Israeli crimes against humanity. To call it anti-Israel is an understatement, and one need not be pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian to deduce such from its track record.
In the 21 sessions since its inception in 2006 as the successor to the heavily criticized Commission on Human Rights, the UNHRC has released seven resolutions calling for investigation of Israeli human rights violations – one-third of its efforts. Four resolutions have been opened in that time against Syria (170,000 dead), two on Darfur (300,000 killed), and one on Libya (25,000 fatalities at the height of its 2011 civil war) – each of these countries guilty of extreme crimes against humanity. None of these resolutions or commissions of inquiry have yielded results other than deploring certain actions and a declaration of intent to investigate. None too, will its latest resolution on Israel.
The UNHRC's resolution on July 23 called for an urgent commission of inquiry into Israel's war crimes in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. It expressed "grave concern" over the lack of implementation from its previous commission charged with investigating human rights violations, led by Richard Goldstone, following the 2009 Gaza war, "convinced that lack of accountability for violations of international law reinforces a culture of impunity, leading to a recurrence of violations and seriously endangering the maintenance of international peace."
In the five pages of its latest resolution, Israel was noted 18 times – once calling for an end of attacks against civilians, including Israeli, and the rest deploring Israeli military aggressions, the incitement of extremist and illegal Israeli settlers, Israeli occupation, Israeli arrests of Palestinians, and Israeli failures to protect Palestinian civilians in accordance with international law. All important, all ignorant of the other side's own activities.
Hamas was not mentioned even once, not even in the brief clause demanding attention to the attacks against Israeli civilians. There was no clause recommending investigation into the Gazan government's use of civilian buildings as cover for its illegal tunnels housing weapons depots and launchers, nor into the widespread reports of its urging residents to ignore Israeli military warnings to evacuate – the word 'human shield' has never once been used in eight years of resolutions.
Twenty-nine of 46 member states voted in favor of the UNHRC's latest resolution, including India, in what has been seen as a major policy shift, as part of its alliance with the BRIC countries. Only the United States voted against the resolution; 17 countries abstained – all European. Their abstention, as the major voting bloc in the council, was tantamount to approval; in the UNHRC there is an automatic majority against Israel.
The resolution, as in most of the UN bodies – including the General Assembly and the Security Council - is not binding. It is a recommendation alone, one that reflects the "resolve" of a particular body, enforcing the views of its member states. There is little chance of legal intervention and unless the International Criminal Court or member states of the UNHRC choose to adopt the body's decision as legally binding nationally, the resolution will have no official impact on Israeli actions, nor can it threaten its legal status in international law.
What this resolution does, in effect, is isolate Israel as a violator of human rights, regardless of circumstance. In expressing its concern over the "lack of findings" in Goldstone's 2009 report, it neglects to mention that Goldstone himself retracted his findings of Israeli guilt of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity [an investigation which Israel refused to cooperate with]: "While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the UN committee's report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy," Goldstone said in his retraction.
Goldstone, who also served as chief prosecutor in the international tribunals of Yugoslavia and Rwanda following those genocides, criticized the UNHRC at the time of his retraction as a body that "repeatedly rush[es] to pass condemnatory resolutions in the face of alleged violations of human rights law by Israel but ... have failed to take similar action in the face of even more serious violations by other States. Until the Gaza Report they failed to condemn the firing of rockets and mortars at Israeli civilian centers."
The pattern is clear. The United Nations Human Rights Council has no bearing on international law, only on opinion. International efforts to determine crimes against humanity must not be left to an obscure council to determine – particularly not one in which nearly half of its members abstain in vote. There are tribunals for these prosecutions, obliged by international law to take into context the full picture – in this case, not just Israeli violations, but those of Hamas too. Any tribunal that fails to mention the crimes of Gaza's rulers has failed in its task of adhering to international law, regardless of its findings on Israeli actions.
The United Nations Human Rights Council should focus its efforts on the massacres still happening in Syria and in Iraq's Mosul region – where militias unbound by international law are at relentless and unsupervised war.
The conflict between Israel and Hamas – the latter which wishes to be seen as a viable regime with nearly three million people under its authority, with little military and political support – must first be concluded in a cease-fire between the two governments and then in a political agreement involving either the Palestinian Authority or an international supervising force, to ensure a long-standing cease-fire. Declarations of crimes against humanity on the part of Israel are premature, preconceived, and ignorant of the facts on the ground.
Friday, July 25, 2014
Flight ban to Israel was a Hamas victory, and that battle is not over yet
When most of the world's leading airlines canceled their scheduled flights to Tel Aviv this week, Israel rushed to dispel security concerns and Hamas claimed victory. But Israel's assurances were haste and the Islamist organization's crow was in place: It was indeed a strategic advance for Hamas, both in security terms and in psychological warfare.
The U.S. and EU aviation authorities issued their ban because they have no way of ensuring that a rocket aimed at Ben Gurion Airport or anywhere in central Israel does not hit one of their national carriers over Israel's airspace. Thirty-six hours after releasing the recommendations, both agencies reversed their decisions and flights were resumed, yet the damage was already done.
The initial decision to suspend flights was made just days after the Malaysia-bound MH-17 commercial jet was hit by a missile fired over East Ukraine and hours after a house in the central Israeli city of Yehud was completely demolished by a direct hit from a rocket aimed at the airport just a short distance away.
These authorities have flight advisories over just about every war zone on earth – from Mali to Libya and Syria, Iraq to East Ukraine. The recommendation to restrict flights over Israel – where dozens of rockets fly directly into the commercial air corridor on a daily basis – was sound, made in line with legitimate safety concerns. It was not, as some critics posit, a boycott of Israel or a deliberate bow by the international communities in Hamas' favor.
American and European carriers resumed their flights Friday after receiving Israeli security assurances, but the lifting of the ban might be short-lived: Two commercial planes, Air Canada and Easy Jet, were within minutes of landing at Ben Gurion the morning the flights resumed, when three Hamas M-75s were fired at Ben Gurion. Both flights quickly rerouted back over the sea, waiting for the all-clear sign before returning toward Israel and continuing their descent.
Thousands of internet enthusiasts followed the action on the live tracker flightradar24.com – there is no guarantee that Hamas is not doing the same, launching their rockets the moment incoming flights enter the radar.
Despite the sense of normalcy that abounds in Tel Aviv as rockets are intercepted mid-air close to the airport, the fact is that Israel is under rapid rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. Israel has pled with the international community to recognize the constant barrage of explosives targeting its citizens, yet rushed to assure the same countries that the security concerns should not affect air traffic. In terms of both international opinion and safety, Israel would have done well to hold off on these assurances.
Hamas has scored two main victories on this front: The first – strategic – was in successfully creating a volatile security trap. The threat to human life on the ground is minimal, especially considering the inaccuracy of the long-range rockets, but it is not foregone. Most of these rockets have been intercepted by the Iron Dome, with the main danger being falling shrapnel, but the defense system's success rate stands only at around 70 percent now, 20 percent less than at the beginning of the war. Commercial planes flying overhead at the moment a rocket is fired or explodes on interception impact are even more vulnerable than vehicles, buildings or living beings in Tel Aviv. The security threat mid-air is real and it is immediate.
Hamas' second victory – psychological - was imbuing in Israelis a sense of siege, first from the constant rocket fire and then from the realization that freedom of movement outside of our Middle Eastern island was suddenly restricted by the cancelation of flights. El Al and Arkia added flights to their schedule to accommodate stranded passengers, but at prices boosted some 150 percent. British Airways was one of the only international airlines to continue its regularly scheduled traffic to Israel, as did Turkish and Ukrainian airlines – neither of the latter particularly desirable destinations for Israelis at this point. Hamas, whether intentionally or not, has shown Israelis what it means to be under blockade.
Neither of these military advances by Hamas trumps the severity of the Israeli operation in Gaza. The IDF's goal was to demolish the tunnels housing rockets and launchers, and it is succeeding in that operation. Nearly 900 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded; 35 Israeli soldiers and three civilians have died over the course of the war. Cease-fire negotiations are progressing, with indications that Hamas is willing to agree to an amended version of the Egyptian proposal offered two weeks ago.
Israel will win this war, but Hamas will declare itself victor – much as Hezbollah did in 2006, when it succeeded in showing Israel that the rules of the game have changed, regardless of the number of casualties or the impact on weapons strongholds. Militant organizations no longer rely on the guerilla warfare that once characterized them. Their strategies are improving, their training is tighter, and regardless of the body count at the end of the battles, their victories are real and they are immediate. In war, every battle counts.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
The IDF's moral and legal dilemma in defining a 'kidnapped' soldier as MIA or fallen
The Israel Defense Force's official death toll in the Gaza Strip is now 32 – with a 33rd name released to the public and marked in red on its list of fallen, awaiting confirmation: Sgt. Oron Shaul, who Hamas claims to have kidnapped after attacking his APC in Gaza and killing the other six soldiers on board.
Shaul's status is in limbo. In a carefully worded announcement, the IDF said that the identification process of his remains was still in progress and that the inquiry would continue. The army has not released an official declaration defining Shaul as missing in action, nor whether he is dead or alive. This ambiguous statement reflects the sensitivity of the situation. Without saying so - except in hinted leaks to the media - the IDF estimates that there is no chance that Shaul survived the deadly attack on his APC. The vehicle was seen as a ball of fire, so one could only imagine the condition of those trapped inside. It took the army two days to identify the bodies of Shaul's six comrades and to confirm their deaths. So why the ambiguity on the part of the IDF?
The careful official wording of Shaul's status is rooted in the IDF's practice of categorization, which incorporates military and Jewish traditions, thus taking the problem beyond just a legalistic realm into a question of religious ethics and morality.
The IDF uses three main categories to define such cases. The first one is obvious: that the soldier was killed. This means that a body or body parts have been carefully identified, nowadays using DNA samples (though in the past only dental x-rays were used), and the soldier's remains are buried.
The second category is defined as "a fallen soldier whose burial place is unknown." This means that sufficient evidence has been collected verifying the soldier's death, either from intelligence sources or eyewitnesses confirming that he had died in battle, but that the body itself has not been found and recovered. There is a special plot in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl dedicated to these soldiers, most of them unidentified fallen from the 1948 Independence Day War.
The third category used by the IDF is defining the soldier as "missing in action," which, simply put, means there is no indication of his whereabouts or what happened to him.
In this case, the IDF is still trying to determine what exactly happened to Sgt. Oron Shaul.
Most of the inquiries into the circumstances of Shaul's disappearance are based on intelligence, with the hope – though without high expectations – that Hamas will make an official announcement declaring the soldier alive or dead, and if dead whether they are holding his body, parts of his body, or just the identification tag they displayed when declaring that he had been kidnapped following the attack.
Until the mystery is lifted, the IDF cannot and will not officially define Shaul's status – neither as missing in action or as dead.
There have been several cases in the past in which it was quite clear to the IDF that a soldier or soldiers had died, but the families refused to accept that definition, and battled the army in court to prevent the declaration of their sons as a fallen soldier or as a fallen soldier whose place of burial is unknown.
The most well-known example followed the battle of Sultan Yaakoub during the First Lebanon War in 1982, pertaining to three soldiers most probably killed in that battle, but whose bodies were not found.
Despite eyewitness testimonies describing the soldiers' tank as hit and obliterated, the families – who were religious – refused to allow the IDF to declare them as killed in action.
A more recent case involved the status of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the two soldiers whose abduction by the Hezbollah sparked the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and whose bodies were returned to Israel after two years of lengthy negotiations. Hezbollah never revealed whether they had been killed before the kidnap or died in the militants' hands.
As it stands, the IDF has neither the intelligence, pathological or medical evidence proving Shaul's death, and as such cannot - due to tradition and army regulations - define him as killed in action or as fallen soldier whose burial place is unknown. But it also cannot yet define him as missing in action.
Shaul's status is in limbo. In a carefully worded announcement, the IDF said that the identification process of his remains was still in progress and that the inquiry would continue. The army has not released an official declaration defining Shaul as missing in action, nor whether he is dead or alive. This ambiguous statement reflects the sensitivity of the situation. Without saying so - except in hinted leaks to the media - the IDF estimates that there is no chance that Shaul survived the deadly attack on his APC. The vehicle was seen as a ball of fire, so one could only imagine the condition of those trapped inside. It took the army two days to identify the bodies of Shaul's six comrades and to confirm their deaths. So why the ambiguity on the part of the IDF?
The careful official wording of Shaul's status is rooted in the IDF's practice of categorization, which incorporates military and Jewish traditions, thus taking the problem beyond just a legalistic realm into a question of religious ethics and morality.
The IDF uses three main categories to define such cases. The first one is obvious: that the soldier was killed. This means that a body or body parts have been carefully identified, nowadays using DNA samples (though in the past only dental x-rays were used), and the soldier's remains are buried.
The second category is defined as "a fallen soldier whose burial place is unknown." This means that sufficient evidence has been collected verifying the soldier's death, either from intelligence sources or eyewitnesses confirming that he had died in battle, but that the body itself has not been found and recovered. There is a special plot in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl dedicated to these soldiers, most of them unidentified fallen from the 1948 Independence Day War.
The third category used by the IDF is defining the soldier as "missing in action," which, simply put, means there is no indication of his whereabouts or what happened to him.
In this case, the IDF is still trying to determine what exactly happened to Sgt. Oron Shaul.
Most of the inquiries into the circumstances of Shaul's disappearance are based on intelligence, with the hope – though without high expectations – that Hamas will make an official announcement declaring the soldier alive or dead, and if dead whether they are holding his body, parts of his body, or just the identification tag they displayed when declaring that he had been kidnapped following the attack.
Until the mystery is lifted, the IDF cannot and will not officially define Shaul's status – neither as missing in action or as dead.
There have been several cases in the past in which it was quite clear to the IDF that a soldier or soldiers had died, but the families refused to accept that definition, and battled the army in court to prevent the declaration of their sons as a fallen soldier or as a fallen soldier whose place of burial is unknown.
The most well-known example followed the battle of Sultan Yaakoub during the First Lebanon War in 1982, pertaining to three soldiers most probably killed in that battle, but whose bodies were not found.
Despite eyewitness testimonies describing the soldiers' tank as hit and obliterated, the families – who were religious – refused to allow the IDF to declare them as killed in action.
A more recent case involved the status of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the two soldiers whose abduction by the Hezbollah sparked the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and whose bodies were returned to Israel after two years of lengthy negotiations. Hezbollah never revealed whether they had been killed before the kidnap or died in the militants' hands.
As it stands, the IDF has neither the intelligence, pathological or medical evidence proving Shaul's death, and as such cannot - due to tradition and army regulations - define him as killed in action or as fallen soldier whose burial place is unknown. But it also cannot yet define him as missing in action.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Hamas' terms for a cease-fire could be the answer for Israel
As Israel's operation in Gaza reaches into its third week, it can already be called a war, one with a life-expectancy of at least another week or two. Unless a cease-fire agreement is consolidated in the next few days that meets the terms of both Israel and Hamas, as well as those of Egypt, the ground incursion will continue and the number of casualties on both sides will triple.
This operation bears more similarities to the Second Lebanon War than either of Israel's actions in Gaza in 2009 or 2012, both in the alarming numbers of casualties among Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers, and in Hamas' well trained combat strategies and infiltrations, reminiscent of those undertaken by Hezbollah in 2006.
Hamas has made good on its promise of turning the Gaza Strip into a graveyard for Israeli soldiers, with at least 25 IDF deaths confirmed so far. The death toll among Palestinians has reached nearly 550, and though there are is no exact count of women and children among this number, the vast battles in crowded civilian neighborhood as well as the air strikes on hospitals, mosques and schools concealing Hamas' weaponry indicates a percentage far higher than the number of militant casualties.
Over 1,100 Lebanese civilians were killed in the 31 days of fighting in 2006, and 121 Israeli soldiers, with 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilians – at the rate this operation is going, half the time so far of Lebanon, the 2014 Gaza war will produce far more devastation. Hamas has insisted that it will keep on fighting, and its ground battles against Israel in the center of the Gaza Strip have been relentless, as has its rocket attacks against southern and central Israel. No long-range M-302 has been fired at northern Israel in nearly a week, signaling that either Israel has demolished this supply or that Hamas has hidden it well while it focuses on head-to-head combat and close range accuracy.
Hamas has lured the IDF into crowded neighborhoods in Gaza, increasing the casualties on both sides and surprising the Israeli troops with its tactics of ambush, particularly using anti-tank missiles, but its greatest surprise so far has been its infiltration through Gaza tunnels into populated Israeli territory. At least three infiltrations have been successful so far, begging the question of why the IDF does not focus its battles along the border to strike their openings, rather than being lured by Hamas into the crowded neighborhoods of Gaza City where these tunnels are based to hide headquarter operations and rocket depots.
Two channels of cease-fire negotiations are currently underway. Former National Security Adviser Giora Eiland defined them to me in our conversation tonight as such: the first, in Cairo, where the Egyptian mediators of the first proposal offered last week are negotiating with Israeli, Hamas, Palestinian Authority and international officials. UN Chief Ban Ki-moon arrived Monday for talks and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was due to land tonight with a message from his boss Barack Obama to reach a cease-fire as soon as possible.
On the other channel, Hamas is negotiating with Turkey and Qatar, and solidifying its stance that it will not bend to demands, telling Arab media outlets that its mediators on that end support its stance.
These two channels represent two possible outcomes: the first is the one offered and accepted by Israel and rejected by Hamas, which stipulates two phases of a cease-fire, beginning with a halt in hostilities followed by a negotiations process of future security arrangements. The second is coordinated by Hamas, with the apparent support of Qatar – its main and only benefactor – and Turkey, which calls for a one-phase cease-fire that encompasses all demands in one swift agreement.
Israel and Egypt are coordinated in the two-phase proposal, and even in the initial decision of the IDF to enter Gaza to locate the tunnels in an effort to wipe out Hamas' military capabilities and bring about the inevitable demilitarization of Gaza, be its future government run by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, or an international entity.
Considering Hamas' refusals, it is likely that Turkey and particularly Qatar – tasked as the overseer of any rehabilitation in Gaza post-truce – will yield the upper hand in the actual cease-fire to come. Israel has made clear that it will not interject in political decisions in Gaza, and has allied itself with Egypt to dismantle the military regime in Hamas. Israel is open to the Qatari proposals, however, and like Hamas, sees a benefit in the Islamist organization's main demand of opening the Rafah crossing - something Egypt is less inclined to agree to.
There are indications, however, that Egypt is willing to amend its cease-fire draft to accommodate this Hamas request, so long as the Islamist organization surrenders its military capabilities.
Despite Egypt's hesitation, Israel is likely to take a Qatari proposal based on Hamas demands into consideration. As long as the cease-fire stipulates a total halt to hostilities and demilitarization, Israel is amenable to the flow of international or Arab funds to rebuild Gaza (with a guarantee of no weapons influx), the complete opening of Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt, and temporary eases on seaports and the crossing with Israel to ensure the rehabilitation of civilian life in the strip.
The international heavyweights now in Gaza, the UN Secretary General and U.S. President Barack Obama's top diplomat, want to see a quick a swift resolution. Should their negotiations yield willingness with Egyptian President Abdel al-Sissi to negotiate with the Qatari and Turkish drafts as demanded by Hamas, a viable cease-fire proposal could emerge by tomorrow morning – though will likely take more than a few days of deliberations before presentation.
The ball is in Egypt's court tonight, and Israel's immediately thereafter, once an outline of the proposal has been presented. Otherwise, the casualty and refugee numbers of the 2014 Gaza war will far surpass those of Lebanon. Israel is not willing to take that chance, particularly now as the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority have been put far on hold and the Iran nuclear talks have passed their deadline with barely any media attention.
Israel has no interest in seeing this war escalate, and neither does Hamas – no matter what gains it thinks it has reached, it depends on international support, funding, and moreover recognition, and with the rising number of casualties on both sides along with the demolition of its rocket depot, it knows it has little chance of surviving beyond the next two weeks, unless a cease-fire is reached.
This operation bears more similarities to the Second Lebanon War than either of Israel's actions in Gaza in 2009 or 2012, both in the alarming numbers of casualties among Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers, and in Hamas' well trained combat strategies and infiltrations, reminiscent of those undertaken by Hezbollah in 2006.
Hamas has made good on its promise of turning the Gaza Strip into a graveyard for Israeli soldiers, with at least 25 IDF deaths confirmed so far. The death toll among Palestinians has reached nearly 550, and though there are is no exact count of women and children among this number, the vast battles in crowded civilian neighborhood as well as the air strikes on hospitals, mosques and schools concealing Hamas' weaponry indicates a percentage far higher than the number of militant casualties.
Over 1,100 Lebanese civilians were killed in the 31 days of fighting in 2006, and 121 Israeli soldiers, with 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilians – at the rate this operation is going, half the time so far of Lebanon, the 2014 Gaza war will produce far more devastation. Hamas has insisted that it will keep on fighting, and its ground battles against Israel in the center of the Gaza Strip have been relentless, as has its rocket attacks against southern and central Israel. No long-range M-302 has been fired at northern Israel in nearly a week, signaling that either Israel has demolished this supply or that Hamas has hidden it well while it focuses on head-to-head combat and close range accuracy.
Hamas has lured the IDF into crowded neighborhoods in Gaza, increasing the casualties on both sides and surprising the Israeli troops with its tactics of ambush, particularly using anti-tank missiles, but its greatest surprise so far has been its infiltration through Gaza tunnels into populated Israeli territory. At least three infiltrations have been successful so far, begging the question of why the IDF does not focus its battles along the border to strike their openings, rather than being lured by Hamas into the crowded neighborhoods of Gaza City where these tunnels are based to hide headquarter operations and rocket depots.
Two channels of cease-fire negotiations are currently underway. Former National Security Adviser Giora Eiland defined them to me in our conversation tonight as such: the first, in Cairo, where the Egyptian mediators of the first proposal offered last week are negotiating with Israeli, Hamas, Palestinian Authority and international officials. UN Chief Ban Ki-moon arrived Monday for talks and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was due to land tonight with a message from his boss Barack Obama to reach a cease-fire as soon as possible.
On the other channel, Hamas is negotiating with Turkey and Qatar, and solidifying its stance that it will not bend to demands, telling Arab media outlets that its mediators on that end support its stance.
These two channels represent two possible outcomes: the first is the one offered and accepted by Israel and rejected by Hamas, which stipulates two phases of a cease-fire, beginning with a halt in hostilities followed by a negotiations process of future security arrangements. The second is coordinated by Hamas, with the apparent support of Qatar – its main and only benefactor – and Turkey, which calls for a one-phase cease-fire that encompasses all demands in one swift agreement.
Israel and Egypt are coordinated in the two-phase proposal, and even in the initial decision of the IDF to enter Gaza to locate the tunnels in an effort to wipe out Hamas' military capabilities and bring about the inevitable demilitarization of Gaza, be its future government run by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, or an international entity.
Considering Hamas' refusals, it is likely that Turkey and particularly Qatar – tasked as the overseer of any rehabilitation in Gaza post-truce – will yield the upper hand in the actual cease-fire to come. Israel has made clear that it will not interject in political decisions in Gaza, and has allied itself with Egypt to dismantle the military regime in Hamas. Israel is open to the Qatari proposals, however, and like Hamas, sees a benefit in the Islamist organization's main demand of opening the Rafah crossing - something Egypt is less inclined to agree to.
There are indications, however, that Egypt is willing to amend its cease-fire draft to accommodate this Hamas request, so long as the Islamist organization surrenders its military capabilities.
Despite Egypt's hesitation, Israel is likely to take a Qatari proposal based on Hamas demands into consideration. As long as the cease-fire stipulates a total halt to hostilities and demilitarization, Israel is amenable to the flow of international or Arab funds to rebuild Gaza (with a guarantee of no weapons influx), the complete opening of Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt, and temporary eases on seaports and the crossing with Israel to ensure the rehabilitation of civilian life in the strip.
The international heavyweights now in Gaza, the UN Secretary General and U.S. President Barack Obama's top diplomat, want to see a quick a swift resolution. Should their negotiations yield willingness with Egyptian President Abdel al-Sissi to negotiate with the Qatari and Turkish drafts as demanded by Hamas, a viable cease-fire proposal could emerge by tomorrow morning – though will likely take more than a few days of deliberations before presentation.
The ball is in Egypt's court tonight, and Israel's immediately thereafter, once an outline of the proposal has been presented. Otherwise, the casualty and refugee numbers of the 2014 Gaza war will far surpass those of Lebanon. Israel is not willing to take that chance, particularly now as the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority have been put far on hold and the Iran nuclear talks have passed their deadline with barely any media attention.
Israel has no interest in seeing this war escalate, and neither does Hamas – no matter what gains it thinks it has reached, it depends on international support, funding, and moreover recognition, and with the rising number of casualties on both sides along with the demolition of its rocket depot, it knows it has little chance of surviving beyond the next two weeks, unless a cease-fire is reached.
Friday, July 18, 2014
Life, interrupted: The macabre humor of wartime Tel Aviv
A triathlete friend once told me, confidentially, that he straps on his heart rate monitor while in bed with his partner, to measure his pulse during sex. He updated me this week that he's found a new use for the toy, now that his work-out routine has been disrupted: he still wears it to bed, but now monitors his heart rate running to take shelter when the rocket siren sounds in Tel Aviv. In his mid-40s, he's managed to get it up to an impressive 180, and can sprint to the stairwell in just 23 seconds (including transition time of putting on pants and glasses). It turns out nothing improves interval speed quite like dodging rockets.
On the surface, Tel Aviv seems normal. The cafes are packed with hipsters and their dogs, top Israeli musicians grace the stages of the city's concert halls, and pedestrians still mill the streets as usual, on their way to work or to shop or to get a coffee.
Like the tide on our Mediterranean shores, however, the calm can be deceiving. Traffic has been noticeably lighter these last few weeks, cyclists have chosen to cancel their weekend rides on the empty roads for lack of shelter if a rocket strikes, and the beach that usually hums and booms mid-July is practically empty. Neil Young canceled his much-accoladed show this week, not as a boycott, but rather at the request of producers and the Home Front Command, fearing that rockets might be fired during his open air venue endangering the 20,000 or spectators who planned to attend the event.
"How much money have you saved on concerts this month now that nobody will appear in Tel Aviv?" a friend recently asked me. The answer is, a lot. When war rages, mostly outside of our borders, normal life is disrupted.
It's not Neil Young that I seek, though the idea of seeing this musician who sound-tracked my life as a teenager excited me; it's the freedom to live as I usually do in between wars – light, easy, sun-kissed. War rages in Gaza, nearly 300 dead so far, and my personal experience in the bubble of Tel Aviv is not immediate death, but rather fear and trepidation of what may come, a rocket or two a day, none fatal. As another triathlete friend recently said: 'Worst case scenario, you'll be injured and unable to run'. Indeed, this is the worst case scenario in my Tel Aviv under fire. I stick to the other side of the beach road when I run, where the buildings double as shelter (and shade from the burning sun).
Many Tel Aviv residents will harrumph, and wave away concerns from their friends abroad, saying it's not going to hit here and there's nothing to worry about, but the fear and the trepidation has taken its toll on everyone.
The pressure is on, it can be felt everywhere, but most people prefer to ignore the emotions bubbling beneath their bravado. This generalization of course does not apply to everyone, not to the poor families of the city's south, which don't stand in line with the leftist majority of the city, or the migrants, that have boosted the number of residents of our neighborhoods, fleeing from one war zone to the next, but it is the overwhelming experience here of the majority - the young and the cosmopolitan, those whose roots and future are in this city.
The war is on everybody's minds. The rockets get all of our heart rates rising, no matter what the likelihood of them hitting us and no matter if we are measuring with a fancy watch. Everyone has a friend, if not 10, called up for reserves, either awaiting entry to Gaza or one of the tens of thousands already inside.
In this bubble of ours, where anti-war and anti-occupation protests are the most prominent political expressions of those who do choose to acknowledge that we are at war, Tel Aviv residents are coping with the most effective weapon we have: humor. Black humor, as war requires. This is a city of pundits and humorists: from the pot-smoking 21-year-old just back from India to the 61-year-old artist sitting at the legendary Café Tamar, everybody has something to say.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his extreme right-wing deputy defense minister, Danny Danon, for opposing a cease-fire and threatening to quit if it happened, the internet exploded with memes and jokes: 'Hamas' greatest victory', one internet analyst wrote, 'is getting rid of Danon'. 'I wonder if the army will bulldoze his home,' wrote another. When an unnamed Israeli official told the BBC on Thursday that a cease-fire had been consolidated and was imminent, the blogosphere was quick to chime in: 'That official is Danon. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet'.
Chaim Levinson, a colleague of mine at Haaretz and master of one-liners, has shot off some of the best zingers so far this war: From harping on the worried mother calling for animal-rights activists to intervene in the brutal death of a bird shot down amid an Iron Dome interception to comments on supermarket behavior – 'people are packing it in now, like there's a war, I keep trying to explain, it's just a clearance sale (Hebrew cognate for military operation)' - the expression of distance from the reality experienced by our southern neighbors is clear.
A ground operation is underway in Gaza, more than 160 sites have been hit with a target on the tunnels that run from north to south, hiding Hamas' infrastructure, its headquarters and its depots. More than a thousand rocket have been fired at Israel, raining on its south at more frequency than any winter storm. The death toll has reached nearly 300 in Gaza and two in Israel, a soldier and a civilian.
The bubble of Tel Aviv is aware of these developments, fears them, and is trying as hard as it can to remain detached. This war can last another two weeks, if not more; our friends are on the front, and our summer is lost. At least there is humor, to keep our heads above the frothy waters, as Gaza burns, our south fears for its life, and we run to shelter every day. Here in Tel Aviv, life is at best normal, just interrupted. Maybe we will even be able to swim beyond the local currents soon and return to life as we know it. Until then, we can only hope for cease-fire.
On the surface, Tel Aviv seems normal. The cafes are packed with hipsters and their dogs, top Israeli musicians grace the stages of the city's concert halls, and pedestrians still mill the streets as usual, on their way to work or to shop or to get a coffee.
Like the tide on our Mediterranean shores, however, the calm can be deceiving. Traffic has been noticeably lighter these last few weeks, cyclists have chosen to cancel their weekend rides on the empty roads for lack of shelter if a rocket strikes, and the beach that usually hums and booms mid-July is practically empty. Neil Young canceled his much-accoladed show this week, not as a boycott, but rather at the request of producers and the Home Front Command, fearing that rockets might be fired during his open air venue endangering the 20,000 or spectators who planned to attend the event.
"How much money have you saved on concerts this month now that nobody will appear in Tel Aviv?" a friend recently asked me. The answer is, a lot. When war rages, mostly outside of our borders, normal life is disrupted.
It's not Neil Young that I seek, though the idea of seeing this musician who sound-tracked my life as a teenager excited me; it's the freedom to live as I usually do in between wars – light, easy, sun-kissed. War rages in Gaza, nearly 300 dead so far, and my personal experience in the bubble of Tel Aviv is not immediate death, but rather fear and trepidation of what may come, a rocket or two a day, none fatal. As another triathlete friend recently said: 'Worst case scenario, you'll be injured and unable to run'. Indeed, this is the worst case scenario in my Tel Aviv under fire. I stick to the other side of the beach road when I run, where the buildings double as shelter (and shade from the burning sun).
Many Tel Aviv residents will harrumph, and wave away concerns from their friends abroad, saying it's not going to hit here and there's nothing to worry about, but the fear and the trepidation has taken its toll on everyone.
The pressure is on, it can be felt everywhere, but most people prefer to ignore the emotions bubbling beneath their bravado. This generalization of course does not apply to everyone, not to the poor families of the city's south, which don't stand in line with the leftist majority of the city, or the migrants, that have boosted the number of residents of our neighborhoods, fleeing from one war zone to the next, but it is the overwhelming experience here of the majority - the young and the cosmopolitan, those whose roots and future are in this city.
The war is on everybody's minds. The rockets get all of our heart rates rising, no matter what the likelihood of them hitting us and no matter if we are measuring with a fancy watch. Everyone has a friend, if not 10, called up for reserves, either awaiting entry to Gaza or one of the tens of thousands already inside.
In this bubble of ours, where anti-war and anti-occupation protests are the most prominent political expressions of those who do choose to acknowledge that we are at war, Tel Aviv residents are coping with the most effective weapon we have: humor. Black humor, as war requires. This is a city of pundits and humorists: from the pot-smoking 21-year-old just back from India to the 61-year-old artist sitting at the legendary Café Tamar, everybody has something to say.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his extreme right-wing deputy defense minister, Danny Danon, for opposing a cease-fire and threatening to quit if it happened, the internet exploded with memes and jokes: 'Hamas' greatest victory', one internet analyst wrote, 'is getting rid of Danon'. 'I wonder if the army will bulldoze his home,' wrote another. When an unnamed Israeli official told the BBC on Thursday that a cease-fire had been consolidated and was imminent, the blogosphere was quick to chime in: 'That official is Danon. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet'.
Chaim Levinson, a colleague of mine at Haaretz and master of one-liners, has shot off some of the best zingers so far this war: From harping on the worried mother calling for animal-rights activists to intervene in the brutal death of a bird shot down amid an Iron Dome interception to comments on supermarket behavior – 'people are packing it in now, like there's a war, I keep trying to explain, it's just a clearance sale (Hebrew cognate for military operation)' - the expression of distance from the reality experienced by our southern neighbors is clear.
A ground operation is underway in Gaza, more than 160 sites have been hit with a target on the tunnels that run from north to south, hiding Hamas' infrastructure, its headquarters and its depots. More than a thousand rocket have been fired at Israel, raining on its south at more frequency than any winter storm. The death toll has reached nearly 300 in Gaza and two in Israel, a soldier and a civilian.
The bubble of Tel Aviv is aware of these developments, fears them, and is trying as hard as it can to remain detached. This war can last another two weeks, if not more; our friends are on the front, and our summer is lost. At least there is humor, to keep our heads above the frothy waters, as Gaza burns, our south fears for its life, and we run to shelter every day. Here in Tel Aviv, life is at best normal, just interrupted. Maybe we will even be able to swim beyond the local currents soon and return to life as we know it. Until then, we can only hope for cease-fire.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
The real goal of Egypt's cease-fire proposal: Disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza
Israel's acceptance of the Egyptian cease-fire proposal effective immediately and to be implemented within 12 hours is not just an agreement to halt this round of hostilities, but rather a calculated move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to begin the process of disarming Gaza and castrate its Islamist rulers of its military capabilities once and for all, with the backing of the Arab world and the international community.
Hamas immediately rejected the offer, declaring it "meaningless," and continued its rocket barrages on Israel with rapid fire, launching short-range rockets over the course of the morning and long-range missiles at Haifa and the Tel Aviv area in the early afternoon. Netanyahu declared within hours of the cabinet decision that Israel would escalate its attacks against Hamas should the latter refuse to the proposal, and ordered the Israel Defense Forces to strike the Gaza Strip mid-afternoon in response to the ongoing rocket fire. Even if Hamas agrees to Egypt's offer, the crossfire should not be expected to cease until seconds before implementation.
The proposal - which calls for an end to Israel's aerial, naval and ground strikes against Gaza, and for Hamas to halt its rocket fire against civilians and border attacks - stipulates that the two sides will meet in Cairo under Egyptian mediation within 48 hours of the cease-fire implementation. Gaza crossings will be opened to allow the passage of people and goods only once the security situation has stabilized, according to the proposal.
The Cairo meeting is intended not only to monitor the two sides' adherence to the cease-fire and to discuss the security issues, but to enable Israel and the mediators to advance to the real mission on the agenda: the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.
Israel has maintained over the course of its eight-day operation in Gaza that it will not agree to any temporary truce with Hamas that would put a "band-aid" on the situation and allow it to resume its rocket fire on the civilian population this week or anytime in the future. Its goal is to "dismantle the terror machine."
The sole outcome the Israeli government is willing to accept is a complete destruction of Hamas' arsenal and a total disarmament of the Gaza Strip under an international resolution that forces the political echelon of the Islamist organization to drop its military capabilities and agree to a demilitarized Palestinian government there.
Both Israel and Egypt, along with most of the Arab world, have a vested interest in disarming Hamas entirely. Hamas is weaker now than it has ever been and will likely be coerced into agreeing to the cease-fire. Despite its currently stated objections, it has no other avenue on which to proceed. The Islamist movement is isolated and it is cornered.
Nearly 50 percent of Hamas rocket launchers and 40 percent of its projectiles have been destroyed in the last eight days; it has launched nearly half of the long-range missiles in its arsenal prior to the outbreak of the war, and without the support of Syria to refresh the influx of weapons, it will not be able to continue its rapid bombardment of Israel for long, with or without a cease-fire. A cease-fire would enable it to regain a place in the Arab world, from which it is now completely isolated and denounced. The pro-Islamist government in Qatar has been enlisted by Egypt as a partner in the mediation process set to commence in two days, to help in the rebuilding and rehabilitation of Gaza once the operation has ended.
Israel made it clear over the 24 hours that preceded its acceptance of the Egyptian proposal that a cease-fire was not on the agenda. Troops and tanks were deployed en masse on the Gaza border, poised for a ground operation, but government officials declared cautious willingness to actually invade.
Israel's acceptance of the cease-fire, therefore, is not surrender in the face of mass rockets, but rather its next calculated military move in its operation against Hamas, an alternative to a ground invasion.
A ground invasion would have enabled Israeli troops to search door-to-door for Hamas' leaders and its arsenal, but at the price of human lives, both Israeli and Palestinians. Former Israeli diplomat and analyst Danny Ayalon told me yesterday that Israel was willing to continue its aerial strikes on Gaza and sustain rocket fire for another 7-10 days, until Hamas' arsenal was exhausted. Israel is prepared to keep fighting, but knows that playing this round to the end will not prevent a future resumption of hostilities.
Israel was no doubt privy to the drafting of the Egyptian proposal and its careful stipulation of the "security issues" to be discussed in Cairo following implementation of the deal. Hamas officials told Arab media this morning that their rejection of the proposal was in part because they had not been told of its clauses in advance.
Egypt's mediation is its way of stepping into the operation, allied with Israel, to put an end to the terror machine in the Gaza Strip. If Hamas refuses to accept the cease-fire, it will in effect mean surrender to Israel. With the rest of the Arab world and the international community ready to clean Gaza of its arsenal, Hamas has no choice but to comply - if not today then tomorrow or in the next few days. Otherwise, the Israeli strikes will only intensify as will the Islamist movement's humiliation and isolation.
Hamas immediately rejected the offer, declaring it "meaningless," and continued its rocket barrages on Israel with rapid fire, launching short-range rockets over the course of the morning and long-range missiles at Haifa and the Tel Aviv area in the early afternoon. Netanyahu declared within hours of the cabinet decision that Israel would escalate its attacks against Hamas should the latter refuse to the proposal, and ordered the Israel Defense Forces to strike the Gaza Strip mid-afternoon in response to the ongoing rocket fire. Even if Hamas agrees to Egypt's offer, the crossfire should not be expected to cease until seconds before implementation.
The proposal - which calls for an end to Israel's aerial, naval and ground strikes against Gaza, and for Hamas to halt its rocket fire against civilians and border attacks - stipulates that the two sides will meet in Cairo under Egyptian mediation within 48 hours of the cease-fire implementation. Gaza crossings will be opened to allow the passage of people and goods only once the security situation has stabilized, according to the proposal.
The Cairo meeting is intended not only to monitor the two sides' adherence to the cease-fire and to discuss the security issues, but to enable Israel and the mediators to advance to the real mission on the agenda: the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.
Israel has maintained over the course of its eight-day operation in Gaza that it will not agree to any temporary truce with Hamas that would put a "band-aid" on the situation and allow it to resume its rocket fire on the civilian population this week or anytime in the future. Its goal is to "dismantle the terror machine."
The sole outcome the Israeli government is willing to accept is a complete destruction of Hamas' arsenal and a total disarmament of the Gaza Strip under an international resolution that forces the political echelon of the Islamist organization to drop its military capabilities and agree to a demilitarized Palestinian government there.
Both Israel and Egypt, along with most of the Arab world, have a vested interest in disarming Hamas entirely. Hamas is weaker now than it has ever been and will likely be coerced into agreeing to the cease-fire. Despite its currently stated objections, it has no other avenue on which to proceed. The Islamist movement is isolated and it is cornered.
Nearly 50 percent of Hamas rocket launchers and 40 percent of its projectiles have been destroyed in the last eight days; it has launched nearly half of the long-range missiles in its arsenal prior to the outbreak of the war, and without the support of Syria to refresh the influx of weapons, it will not be able to continue its rapid bombardment of Israel for long, with or without a cease-fire. A cease-fire would enable it to regain a place in the Arab world, from which it is now completely isolated and denounced. The pro-Islamist government in Qatar has been enlisted by Egypt as a partner in the mediation process set to commence in two days, to help in the rebuilding and rehabilitation of Gaza once the operation has ended.
Israel made it clear over the 24 hours that preceded its acceptance of the Egyptian proposal that a cease-fire was not on the agenda. Troops and tanks were deployed en masse on the Gaza border, poised for a ground operation, but government officials declared cautious willingness to actually invade.
Israel's acceptance of the cease-fire, therefore, is not surrender in the face of mass rockets, but rather its next calculated military move in its operation against Hamas, an alternative to a ground invasion.
A ground invasion would have enabled Israeli troops to search door-to-door for Hamas' leaders and its arsenal, but at the price of human lives, both Israeli and Palestinians. Former Israeli diplomat and analyst Danny Ayalon told me yesterday that Israel was willing to continue its aerial strikes on Gaza and sustain rocket fire for another 7-10 days, until Hamas' arsenal was exhausted. Israel is prepared to keep fighting, but knows that playing this round to the end will not prevent a future resumption of hostilities.
Israel was no doubt privy to the drafting of the Egyptian proposal and its careful stipulation of the "security issues" to be discussed in Cairo following implementation of the deal. Hamas officials told Arab media this morning that their rejection of the proposal was in part because they had not been told of its clauses in advance.
Egypt's mediation is its way of stepping into the operation, allied with Israel, to put an end to the terror machine in the Gaza Strip. If Hamas refuses to accept the cease-fire, it will in effect mean surrender to Israel. With the rest of the Arab world and the international community ready to clean Gaza of its arsenal, Hamas has no choice but to comply - if not today then tomorrow or in the next few days. Otherwise, the Israeli strikes will only intensify as will the Islamist movement's humiliation and isolation.
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